


carry me now

by elliebell (Naladot)



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Growing Up, Introspection, Self-Acceptance, Self-Esteem Issues, Team as Family, industry meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:17:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21776044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell
Summary: It’s hard to explain it to other people, people who don’t know what it’s like. To be two people at once: the real you, and the you that lives in a critical mass of public imagination.Jae works through his millennial angst.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 72
Collections: JYP JUKEBOX ROUND 2: OF MONSTERS AND MEN





	carry me now

**Author's Note:**

> Written for JYP Jukebox Round 2 and inspired by ["Waiting for the Snow"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDgQL2BZU7c&feature=youtu.be) by Of Monsters and Men.
> 
> Wrote this kind of at the last minute; it is strange and idek. Thank you to my friends A and S for your affirming read-through!

* * *

_ I used to make mountains _

_ But then they grew bigger than me _

_ — “Waiting for the Snow” _

  
  


_ So this is it _ , he thinks, standing under the unfurling of the Northern Lights.  _ So this is my life _ .

It’s as if he’s two separate people: the man breathing in frigid air, skin burning from the cold, his boots stuck in the snow, his all too human heart beating against his chest. And then the man he thinks he should be, the glowing image of someone who doesn’t exist, immortal, without flaw.

He feels this in a flash, a shivering incision of clarity into the rhythm and hum of life moving forward in a constant rush. 

For a moment, he is still.

  
  
  


“So how was it?” Sungjin asks as Jae rolls his suitcase into the door of the apartment. It catches on the ledge, and he gives it a solid push, which causes it to fall over, clattering on the tile.

Jae looks at his suitcase, then up at Sungjin, and imagines describing how it felt to stand at the top of the world and feel the steady crash of time in the way his heartbeat matched the swirling of stars in the sky.

“It was cool,” he says.

  
  
  


In the morning, Wonpil wakes Jae up to tell him their goldfish has died. Because he is tired, Jae rolls out of bed, and pads out into the hall behind Wonpil.

It’s Wonpil’s goldfish, really, purchased on a late-night excursion through the city when practice had kept them out until past midnight. Wonpil insisted that the apartment needed a mascot, and what he really wanted was a cat. Their manager put his foot down ( _ who is going to take care of it? _ ) and Wonpil got a fish instead. Regardless, Jae had to acknowledge that it made a difference, coming home at the end of an exhausting tour to an apartment where something was still living and present, a light in the harbor.

Wonpil gathers them all in the bathroom for an odd, somber kind of ceremony. He’s donned a black blazer for the occasion; the rest of them are in pajamas, and Brian is in his boxers and a sweatshirt.

“You were a good fish, Sir Rock-and-Roll,” Wonpil says with a childlike reverence. “You worked hard, and now you can rest. Return to the ocean, my friend.”

He flushes the fish. 

“Amen,” Jae says.

“It’s just that sometimes,” Brian says later, sitting next to Jae in the stairwell, a beer in one hand and his phone in the other, “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

He’s just broken up with this girl he’d really liked, and for the first time in a long while, the prospect of a chart-topping song isn’t taking the edge off the pain.

“Fame and fortune, bro,” Jae answers in a hollow voice.

“What if,” Brian begins. He stops, takes another swig from the bottle, and continues. “What if at the end of my life, I look back, and I realize that I’ve wasted all this time?”

Jae runs his fingers over a set of scars on his knuckles, earned in childhood while he was climbing some rickety monkey bars, too thin to show up on camera. “I don’t think that problem is unique to us,” he says.

  
  
  


When he’s on stage, he believes every word he says. “I just want y’all to shed your stress while you’re here,” he says into the microphone, lights in his eyes. “I know you’ve got your worries, you’ve got all these problems you can’t solve, but this is your chance to just set those things aside and let loose! A Day6 concert is the place for you to feel free!”

And he believes it. Feels the lights burning against his face. He imagines every person in the crowd doing what he says, as if by saying it, he can make it possible. Put your burdens down. Find a new way to live.

A few hours later, he’s packing up instruments backstage, breathing in dust, and the cold sets in.

  
  
  


It’s hard to explain it to other people, people who don’t know what it’s like. To be two people at once: the real you, and the you that lives in a critical mass of public imagination.

_ It’s not that deep _ , he reminds himself, as he drives through the Los Angeles night, reading neon signs sliding past him. The signs advertise strip clubs and liquor, 24-hour groceries and an IHOP. This used to be his normal, his whole world, concentrated in a small corner of a large city in a powerful country, a dot on the globe, slipping into history quietly, one generation forgotten by the next.

When he was a kid he’d read this book about men walking on the moon and he’d convinced himself that he could do the same thing, even so far as to try to persuade his parents to send him to space camp, but they’d sent him to swim lessons at the local YMCA instead.

He looks at the thin sliver of moon visible past the electric haze and considers the things he’s done, the things he hasn’t done, and where it all leaves him, nearly thirty and still a boy, most of the time.

  
  
  


“What would you be doing,” asks the interviewer, “if you weren’t an idol?”

It’s a rote question, and Jae answers by script. But the idea of doing something else sticks with him as the others answer—that and the realization that he could answer the question however he wanted, and it wouldn’t make a difference to anybody. That alternate version of his life doesn’t exist in any meaningful way.

“I think I’d be a teacher,” says Wonpil, and Jae imagines this other Wonpil, carrying out his life in obscurity, a gentle man folded into quiet places, playing piano for years of children who go home to a hundred different kinds of lives behind the closed doors of their individual houses. In the same way, he thinks of their music, pouring out of the speakers of thousands of different devices,  _ his own _ voice in the ears of people he will never meet, saying things he never meant to say, or maybe alleviating pain for the duration of a three-minute track.

He tries to explain it later, and—

“You can’t take responsibility for—everything in the world, Jae,” Sungjin says, half-asleep in his seat on the plane.

Jae taps at the screen of his phone. “But I’ve got to take responsibility for  _ something _ ,” he says.

  
  
  


_ You think too much _ , people used to say.

_ You worry too much, _ said his mother.  _ You don’t worry enough, _ said his father.

_ How could he not know this? _ people say now, in Tweets, in messages, in articles, in photographs, in letters, in forums, in comments, in static.

  
  
  


The question, Jae thinks, shouldn’t be “What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?”

It should be, “What will you do now, since you are?”

  
  
  


Dowoon suggests the trip and books the accommodations; Jae is fairly certain that Sungjin agrees to go only because he’s so confused by their maknae’s uncharacteristic demonstration of initiative. This is how the five of them end up in an isolated cabin at the end of autumn, the air too cold for them to use the pool, but too warm for the nearby ski resort to open.

There’s no cell phone service out here, and the wifi runs slower than Brian before he drinks coffee. It takes them nearly twenty-four hours to detox from their devices, and by the time Jae's brain has adjusted to the lack of stimulation, they’re halfway through the trip.

Jae wakes up in the morning of the second day and forgets, for a moment, to be anxious about anything. It’s a strange feeling.

The sun has only just begun to rise, and everything in the cabin has an odd long shadow, like he’s woken up on the moon. Jae drifts through the house, observing the peeling wallpaper and worn furniture and chipping tiles. The whole place is from another era, clean but used, now posted to Airbnb because what else can be done with it besides tear it down?

He finds Brian in the kitchen, sipping on coffee and reading a newspaper that looks like it’s decades old. Sure enough, it is dated to 1992.

“This is as old as you,” Brian teases, and lifts it to hit Jae. Jae dodges, afraid the paper will crumble on impact.

On cue, Sungjin appears in the kitchen, bleary-eyed with his fists stuffed into his jacket. “Let’s go out,” he says.

Out of habit, they all follow, collecting Dowoon and Wonpil from their rooms.

The path to the lake follows a winding trail through tall trees and dying leaves. None of them say much along the way. Jae feels like he’s stepped out of his one self and back to his other one, his true one, the fragile human person he can’t show to anyone else.

They emerge at the lake. It’s a flat gray mirror, encased by tall trees and a cold yellow sky.

“Dare you to jump,” Dowoon says to him, nodding to the rickety dock stretching out into the water.

Jae looks at it, and looks at Dowoon. Dowoon shrugs, his mouth screwed up in a funny smile. The sun rises slowly, spreading pink breaths into the sky.

Dreading the walk back, Jae strips down to his boxers, piling his clothes in the gravel and setting his shoes next to them. “You guys better do this too,” he says through chattering teeth, and he turns to walk out on the dock.

It’s oddly like being on stage, with a silent audience of trees. The trees don’t care much that he is too skinny, skin turning blue, ribs jutting and stomach soft, unsuitable for photographs. The trees don’t care that he has no way to answer for his failures, the thousand ways he never measures up to the glittering god he supposedly signed on to become. The trees don’t care who he is, or isn’t.

He reaches the end of the dock and stops, shivering. The sun climbs above the horizon. He takes a deep breath.

  
  
  


“LETZGEDDIT!”

He turns as Brian streaks past him, naked as the day he was born, and catapults himself into the water. Dowoon follows next (naked) and then Sungjin (in his boxers) and then Wonpil (boxers and t-shirt), who stops next to Jae and grins, smile shining like the sun.

“What are you waiting for?” he asks, and he jumps.

What is he waiting for? Now, and now, and now. Jae takes the plunge.

  
  
  


They trudge back to the cabin, shivering in their damp clothes. Soon they will go home, and return to the stage and the bright lights.

But right now, he’s living, and he’s not alone, and this is his life. Something small and fragile, on display for the world to see, but if he takes a deep breath, he can almost see it pulling together, a strange bit of magic happening quietly beneath the surface. 

And this is his life.

_ end. _


End file.
